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by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Motherhood, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was written before the reveal about Lily's past and explores Petunia's relationship with her sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





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Petunia Dursley looked down at her nephew tucked sleeping inside the large bottom drawer of a Victorian highboy. _It’s a funny thing, a mother’s love_ she thought, glancing over at Dudley in his cradle, his cheeks round to bursting, his baby mouth wide in a yawn. _It gobbles one up and sweeps the crumbs tidily into the bin._

She wondered what Lily would say about the direction her life had taken. Petunia had chosen to marry the most odious and close minded man, particularly because he was so. Because he was normal, disgustingly and nauseatingly, normal. She had married him under the severely arched windows of an almost empty church in a dress so blindingly white and starched that the cuffs scratched her wrists until she bled into her bouquet. She kept her house clean, perfectly and obsessively clean, because that, too, was normal as was doting on her child, even if his pudgy hands squished around a zwieback vaguely sickened her.

She thought she knew what Lily would say, the same thing she’d said years ago when they were children, when a kindly man with a white beard and glasses and long flowing robes had popped down their chimney. “Well, come on then, Petunia. What are you waiting for? You can’t polish silver forever; there’s more to life than that. More to _us_ than that.”

Two days ago, when this baby, this Harry, had appeared on her doorstep, Petunia had finally felt that she’d decided wisely when she’d continued rubbing Mother’s olive forks _up and down, up and down_ on the cloth instead of stepping with Lily into the fire, when she’d irrevocably chosen the role of Martha over Mary. 

But she couldn’t help remembering being Lily’s sister—making tea for their dolls in Mother’s finest Wedgwood and how Lily took the blame when the sugar bowl shattered; braiding each other’s hair with thick, grosgrain ribbons; and the sweet, secret ache that started in her fingers and shot down her arm to her elbow when she sneaked into Lily’s room one summer to hold her wand—and so she would put Harry where she kept those memories, in the cold and the dark under the stairs of her mind, with just enough bread to live on.


End file.
